It’s been just over a week since Trump took office and he has already taken bold steps to changing our country into Trump’s America. Here are some of the right's he's limited in the ten days he's been in office:
1. Our Opinions
Trump, on his first day in office, took down several important pages from the White House website. Hours after being sworn in, the pages for LGBT rights, climate change, and civil rights had disappeared from the website. The EPA twitter page was silenced, and the page for the Judiciary branch disappeared until Monday morning. By regulating what we can and cannot see on the Internet, Trump is efficiently controlling what we can see and believe. It takes away the option to oppose him because everything that doesn’t go his way is silenced. It's authoritarian and goes against everything America believes in. Where is our freedom to form our own opinions? Censoring the internet is just what the socialist countries we seem to fear so much to do.
2. Safe Health Care
One of the first things that Trump did was reinstate the Global Gag Rule. This rule has been tossed around from administration to administration. The Global Gag Rule, also known as the Mexico City Policy, takes away government funding for International NGOs that perform or promote abortions as a way of family planning. This means that millions of women around the world are being denied safe health care just because the institution performs abortions.
This funding is especially important for those who suffer from HIV/AIDS. If an HIV positive woman were pregnant, she would not have the option to simply abort the pregnancy even though there is a chance that the child could be born with HIV. Most countries that are relying on U.S funding do not have the medical technology that can help prevent the child from developing HIV. This also will lead to unsafe abortions. Even if we make abortion illegal, we will not be able to stop abortion. If women don’t have access to safe abortions they will turn to desperate and dangerous ways of terminating the pregnancies. In these countries where access to birth control is limited, and poverty is growing, abortions are the only way women have to protect their families now. You don’t have to like abortions, but they are necessary for many situations.
Furthermore, he's taken steps to repealing Obamacare without any replacement. Without Obamacare, thousands of people will be red-flagged for pre-existing conditions and will be deprived of their healthcare. 36,000 people could die annually without a program like the Affordable Care Act.
3. Safe Drinking Water
Trump also signed an executive order to start building the Dakota Access Pipeline and Keystone Pipeline, something that Obama stopped after massive protests in North Dakota. These things aren’t just pipelines. By building these pipelines, we are risking the drinking water of thousands of people who live near it. Oil leaks can also lead to massive fires and are all around dangerous. Beyond that, the Dakota Access Pipeline will go through the sacred territory of Native Americans. It is bad enough we’ve taken over all of their land and persecuted them despite the fact that they lived here before us. We are now risking their sacred land for our own selfish gains.
4. The American Dream
Perhaps the most troubling thing that Trump has done in his week in office is a sign two executive orders leading to a limit on immigration. The first put a start on the infamous wall he promised throughout his campaign. The issue with this wall is that it isn’t going to stop illegal immigration. Immigrants aren’t just sprinting across the border. First of all most immigrants aren’t from Mexico at all. In 2014, India was the leading country of origin for immigrants, followed by China, THEN Mexico. Second, a lot of immigrants who are here illegally came here legally, on a plane, with a visa or green card and have simply overstayed their visas. So in our fight against illegal immigration, we are choosing the most expensive and least effective method. A wall isn’t going to do anything but take our tax dollars.
The second executive order was a ban on immigration from seven Muslim countries. This means refugees will not have a safe place and people who already have a life here, legally, might be sent back home to their war-torn countries. We immediately saw green card holders detained as they attempted to come back home. America is their home now, but because of their country of origin, they aren’t allowed back. Why does Donald Trump have the right to deprive people of the American dream? Nancy Pelosi said in a statement “As the Statue of Liberty holds her torch of welcome high, there are tears in her eyes as she sees how low this Administration has stooped in its callousness toward immigrant families and refugees who have trusted in the laws and protections of the United States."
These people aren’t terrorists, they’re human beings who want the freedoms that we American’s take so much pride in. We are a nation founded by immigrants, and now we are turning them away.
It’s been a somber week in America, but we cannot stay quiet. We have already seen progress where companies like Starbucks and Lyft are taking action against the immigration band. Starbucks has pledged to give jobs to refugees, and Lyft has promised to donate 1 million dollars to the ACLU. After taking lots heat, Lyft's rival Uber has also pledged money to the cause.
That's not enough, though, it is imperative that as citizens we show that we will not be censored. If we allow this to continue, all of the progress we have made in the last few years, everything we have protested for, everything we have fought for, will be gone. We have the power to make the change we want to see. So do not sit idly, contact your senators and congressmen, and ensure that we keep our rights because if this is what Trump can do in one week, I don’t want to see what he can do in four years.
